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Three people try their luck fishing in Schiller Park's pond. On the night of Oct. 6, Leisa Randolph and 13-year-old cousin Cody Young were fishing at this spot when a group of youths approached and attacked them. The youths moved on to attack a man and woman elsewhere in the park.

Terror in the park -

Four people were beaten and robbed in Schiller Park on Oct. 6. Twelve youths were charged in the
assaults, with the final case set for trial in May. The information in this story comes from
interviews with the four victims, two of the defendants, a mother and a grandmother of two
defendants, and county prosecutors and defense attorneys. One youth, in a juvenile-detention
center, responded to written questions. Police and court records and courtroom testimony also were
used to reconstruct what happened.

The night was warm, the air alive with chatter, as young women in heels and strapless dresses
and young men in jackets began leaving the South High School homecoming dance.

An overtime football win against the Africentric Nubians the night before had set a buoyant tone
for the dance. Because the South building was closed for renovations, the dance took place in the
old Barrett Middle School on the southern edge of German Village.

A few blocks east, a crowd had gathered at a basketball court. Just after 11 p.m., Clyde Mann
and brothers William and Cheyenne Cornett broke away to catch Clyde's brother, Dontae Mathews, in
his homecoming finery.

Fresh from the dance and hungry, Dontae and his girlfriend, Al-Nisha Hayes, were headed to
McDonald's on S. High Street.

The two groups met within minutes in Schiller Park, joined by others along the way. Most were on
foot; a few rode bikes. By the time they spotted three people fishing in the park pond, they were
about 15 strong.

Perhaps the size of the group affected their sense of right and wrong. Perhaps the Bloods among
them wanted to show they were gang-tough.

The mob surrounded the three at the pond and attacked.

A fishing trip

Plenty of people fish in the pond at Schiller Park, but Leisa Randolph, 27, was particularly
serious about it.

So when she took her 13-year-old cousin, Cody Young, and her aunt fishing on Oct. 6, they
carried a backpack full of hooks and lures as well as assorted rods and three tackle boxes. They
hoped to land a catfish or a bluegill, maybe a bass.

By 10:30, it should be late enough and quiet enough to attract a few choice fish, Randolph
thought as they unpacked their gear along the north bank of the pond.

About an hour later, Cody had just felt a bite on his line and was trying to reel it in when
Randolph noticed they were alone at the pond. She felt spooked, she said, and suggested they pack
up.

That's when she saw all the kids.

"We seen them way off in the distance -- they were coming around the recreation center," she
said. "Before we knew it, there were two or three of them riding up on bikes, and the next thing
you know, they're all back behind us."

She, her aunt and Cody were surrounded as they knelt on the ground to pack the tackle boxes.

"Whad up, blood? Whad up, blood?" Randolph remembers the yells.

At 11, Cheyenne Cornett was the youngest in the group. Another youth told him to hit Cody.

Cody responded with a curse, said William Cornett, 14, although Cody disputes that. But Cheyenne
hopped off his bike and shoved Cody, nearly pushing him into the pond. Within seconds, three or
four youths were hitting Cody, one with a tackle box and others with their hands. At one point,
William said, Cody threw a tackle box at them.

When Randolph tried to stand, one youth motioned for her to stay put. Then someone pulled a
white "Jason" old-school goalie's mask over his face, pointed what she assumed was a gun from under
his white T-shirt and said, "This is a holdup."

Cody was still being struck, with some in the crowd yelling, "Yeah, yeah, come on" and laughing.
One youth tried to grab Randolph's tackle box; the lock broke, and hooks and lures spilled into the
grass.

Someone grabbed her backpack. Others ordered Randolph, her aunt and Cody to stay on the ground.
The kids began to walk away.

Randolph dialed 911 at 11:33 and talked frantically into her cell phone as she, her aunt and
Cody ran for her minivan, parked on Deshler Avenue.

But then, as a cruiser pulled up a few seconds later, she noticed that the youths were out of
sight, behind a hill.

And she remembers thinking, "What are they doing?"

Admiring the gardens

About the same time, a Columbus business executive and an out-of-town friend were walking
through the park fter a late dinner. Diana T. Nave, a real-estate agent from Lexington, Ky., wanted
to see the formal gardens, and they headed toward the statue of German poet Friedrich von
Schiller.

"We looked up and saw a bunch of kids around the statue, mostly boys, but one girl on a bike,"
said the executive, 68, who did not want his name used because of fear of retaliation. "We were
talking about a tree and didn't think anything about the kids."

He had his back turned, but Nave, 65, was facing the crowd and heard "a lot of whooping" as the
youths approached. Then one turned quickly and knocked her friend to the ground.

"I got hit from behind with something, right in the back of my head," he recalled months later,
pointing to the spot. "My knees immediately went out from under me."

As Al-Nisha Hayes and two boys restrained Nave, Dontae Mathews and others kicked the man in the
head, arms and legs as he tried to shield his face. He inched forward on his knees, but the blows
kept him on the ground.

He remembers thinking, "Are they trying to kill me?"

"Nobody was saying anything," he said. "They were just all kicking me."

"What do you think you're doing?" Nave demanded before she, too, was knocked down. She saw her
friend struggle to his feet and run about 10 feet before the bigger boys pushed him down again and
kicked him.

Nave managed to get up, but three youths stood in front of her, demanding the two gold necklaces
she had around her neck.

"No!" she shouted as she gripped the chains. She managed to stuff one in her pocket, but the
other was grabbed.

The teen with the mask then shouted, "I want your damn money!"

For the businessman, that was the breaking point. His fear and pain changed to anger, and he
managed to stand up.

"I don't have any money!" he shouted back. Tensed for more blows, he watched as the youths began
to back up and run away.

He thinks now that's when the first police car arrived at the park in response to Randolph's 911
call. The cruiser jumped the curb from Deshler Avenue and stopped where he and Nave stood.

By then, the crowd was gone. The officers spoke briefly to Nave and her friend, who then walked
to his home nearby.

"There was blood all over him," Nave said. "When he stood up, he had a terrible pain in his back
and bruises all over the place. They'd turned his face into a soccer ball and come perilously close
to hitting him in the right eye."

One of his ears was black from the blows.

The chase

By then, police were in pursuit. A helicopter helped pinpoint the scattering youths.

Some were picked up in the park, others in nearby yards and alleys.

By 12:05 a.m., 11 young people were in custody.

At E. Whittier and S. Pearl streets, all four victims identified their attackers. Nave had no
trouble recognizing the tall teen in a white suit and the lone girl in a short white summer
dress.

Nave continued to talk to detectives as paramedics took her friend to a hospital.

The aftermath

A severe headache plagued Cody Young for several days after the beating as he nursed cuts and
bruises on his face. At school, some students taunted him because he'd "allowed" himself to be
beaten.

In January, he received a letter from Cheyenne Cornett. The letter was a condition of Cheyenne's
probation.

"It said he's sorry for what he put me through," said Cody, now 14. "It made me feel better. I
forgive Cheyenne."

Randolph was chastised by some in her husband's family for not taking better care of Cody.
Police told her she'd done the right thing by protecting her cell phone so she could call for help.
But next time, she said, she would "die fighting for my family."

She thinks the attack was a gang initiation. For weeks afterward, she was afraid to leave her
house. She is still angry -- angry at the attackers and angry that they've made her afraid to go to
the park.

The business executive was in Grant Medical Center's emergency room for five hours after the
beating as doctors ran him through a gamut of tests. His face was black with bruises, and he had
bruises up and down his legs and side. Those faded, but the fear didn't.

"I was very, very, very lucky," he said. "I think it was about a beating, not about money. . .
.

"I think it was just bad timing, being in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Nave had a few bruises, but most of her injuries were emotional. She saw a counselor and stopped
walking in her neighborhood at night. She's thinking about taking a self-defense course.

"I lost some innocence when I saw kids hurting someone and enjoying it," she said. "I've never
seen such violence. These kids, they took great pleasure in it."

She thinks two teens started the violence and the rest jumped in. All the kids were involved,
she said, except perhaps the smallest one.

"It could have happened anyplace, and does," she said. "It was just so random."

In court

Some parents of the accused tried to fight the charges, saying their children had been treated
unfairly. But one by one, the youths pleaded guilty.

"The most important thing to me is that the man has recuperated," said Francine Kelley, whose
13-year-old son, James, was placed on two years of probation. "If he were dead, they could be
facing a murder charge."

Mrs. Kelley thinks the violence began because some of the teens saw Cody as an easy target.

"It wasn't a gang, it was just kids who knew each other," she said. "None of their intention was
to really do anything to anybody. But it only takes one person to do something. You gotta be strong
enough to walk away."

At their court hearings, five of the youths said they didn't participate in the attacks. But
they admitted that they didn't do anything to stop the violence, either.

Prosecutors said some of the teens were gang members but that they were playing a game of
"knockout" -- knocking someone out with one blow -- when they beat up the businessman.

Francisco Matias wrote in a letter from prison that he wishes he could relive that night, saying
he never would have gone to the dance.

Nave also wrote a note, a three-page letter to her attackers asking why.

Why? Why did you do this to us? Were you thinking that we were going to just play
like this didn't happen? Do you realize that one kick placed in certain areas of his head could
have resulted in his instant death? Do you know what happens if a blow is delivered to the temple
or, worse, to the base of the skull?

Do you know what it means to be brain-dead? Did you want to kill him? What would you
have done if you had killed him? By attacking us in this brutal, barbaric manner, did you have a
sense of power? Were you having as much fun as you sounded like you were having?

She read the letter at one hearing; prosecutors read it at others.

Ten youths pleaded guilty. Four received probation. Six were sentenced to juvenile prison for a
year or longer, including Da Varus Cornett, who in February became the 12th person charged.

The case against Clyde Mann is scheduled for trial May 28. Charges were dropped against Carlton
Henley-Huffman, 13, who is developmentally disabled.

William Cornett, who was sentenced to a year of probation and 120 hours of community service,
said the incident and its aftermath have changed him for the better. He did his community service
with Melvin Steward, who runs the Near East Side Community Resource Center and mentors
youngsters.

William "was just like a son," Steward said. "And now he's a different young man
altogether."

William said he's getting good grades and is sorry for what happened in the park. He said he now
sees what happened in a different light. As he put it:

"If you tryin' to show how hard you are, what's that show if you're hitting a 100-year-old
man?"

The executive said he doesn't hate the kids who beat him up. He knows they've grown up in poor
neighborhoods and that some have had little supervision at home.

"I feel badly for all these kids, but to let them off easily is doing them a disservice," he
said. "If they want to, they can straighten up.

"What they were doing was very serious. I'm sorry this happened, and I hope they're sorry."